Monday, January 31, 2011

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, January 31, 2011


Not only one of my favorite songs of all time...

(*PAUSE*)

...but very apropos considering what's heading our way!

AGAIN...!!!

Global "warming," huh? Huh! Huh...?!?!?

(*SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)
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5 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/01/on_egypt_obama_offers_too_litt.html#more

Last week was (in an administration with plenty of them) a low point in foreign policy execution for the Obama team.

On Thursday, Vice President Biden proclaimed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to be a friend of the United States and rejected the suggestions that Mubarak should step down or was a dictator.

(*SARCASTIC CLAP-CLAP-CLAP*)

* SERIOUSLY... CAN'T THEY SIMPLY INSTRUCT THE NEAREST SECRET SERVICE AGENT TO TAZ OL' FOOT-IN-MOUTH JOE THE MOMENT HIS LIPS START MOVING...???

On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded "a little tougher," telling Mubarak not to use violence against his country's protestors and to restore Internet communications that he had cut off. But, alas, [the word] "democracy" did not pass her lips. (Throughout the day, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley tweeted missives, such as, "We hope they choose a path of dialogue and reform.")

By late in the day, it was safe to say no one quite understood what the Obama administration's position was.

* IT'S NOW MONDAY AND NOTHING MUCH HAS CHANGED.

January 31, 2011 at 2:47 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/30/afghanistan-us-troops-dying

Most of the stories told about Benjamin Moore, 23, at his funeral started in a bar and ended in a laugh. Invited to testify about his life from the pews, friend, relative, colleague and neighbour alike described a boisterous, gregarious, energetic young man they'd known in the small New Jersey town of Bordentown since he was born.

"I'll love him 'til I go," his granny said. "If I could go today and bring him back, I would."

Grown men choked on their memories, under the gaze of swollen, reddened eyes, as they remembered a "snot-nosed kid" and a fidget who'd become a volunteer firefighter before enlisting in the military. Shortly before Benjamin left for Afghanistan, he sent a message to his cousin that began: "I'm about to go into another country where they hate me for everything I stand for." Now he was back in a flag-draped box, killed by roadside bomb with two other soldiers in Ghazni province.

* DO ANY OF YOU READING THIS FEEL ANY SAFER AFTER HAVING JUST READ THIS?

There is a reverence for the military in the US on a scale rarely seen anywhere else in the west that transcends political affiliation and pervades popular culture. On aeroplanes the flight attendant will announce if there are soldiers on board to great applause. When I attended a recording of The Daily Show, John Stewart made a special point before the show of thanking the servicemen in the audience.

But while the admiration for those who serve and die may be deep and widespread, interest in what they are doing and why they are doing it is shallow and fleeting.

(*DEEPLY DISCOURAGED NOD*)

During November's midterm elections it barely came up.

"The burden for this war is being carried by such a small slither of society," explains Professor Christopher Gelpi, who specialises in public opinion and foreign policy at Duke University. "Unless you know someone in this war, live near an army base or know of someone who has died, then it is possible for the public to ignore it. People are very disconnected from it."

The country, it seems has moved on. The trouble is the troops are still there.

Back at the Trinity United Methodist church in Bordentown, the minister ended the service with the hymn "Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let It Begin With Me."

Elsewhere in the country, small communities like this weep every week without respite as bodies from a global conflict return to become a local tragedy without, apparently, altering the national mood. Like a stone thrown into a pond the ripples go only so far and then fade away.

Back in 1971, during the Vietnam war, John Kerry famously testified before the Senate foreign relations committee. He put the question: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Forty years later, the answer appears to be that you simply stop paying attention to their deaths.

(*BOWING MY HEAD IN SHAME FOR MY COUNTRYMEN*)

January 31, 2011 at 4:19 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.city-journal.org/2011/21_1_teen-pregnancy.html

In my short time as a teacher in Connecticut, I have muddled through President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, which tied federal funding of schools to various reforms, and through President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which does much the same thing, though with different benchmarks.

* EVER NOTICE THAT TEDDY KENNEDY'S NAME IS... er... SOMEHOW USUALLY ABSENT WHEN THE NO CHILD BEHIND ACT IS MENTIONED? (HEY... JUST SAYIN'...)

Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine - already "entitled" to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which provides funds to public schools with large low-income populations - are swimming in money.

(*FROWN*)

At my school, we pay five teachers to tutor kids after school and on Saturdays. They sit in classrooms waiting for kids who never show up.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

We don’t want for books - or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non–Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works.

Our facility is state-of-the-art, thanks to a recent $40 million face-lift, with gleaming new hallways and bathrooms and a fully computerized library.

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children - all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren.

* SURELY A SUCKER'S BET... (*SIGH*)

Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

Within my lifetime, single parenthood has been transformed from shame to saintliness. In our society, perversely, we celebrate the unwed mother as a heroic figure, like a fireman or a police officer. During the last presidential election, much was made of Obama’s mother, who was a single parent. Movie stars and pop singers flaunt their daddy-less babies like fishing trophies.

None of this is lost on my students.

In today’s urban high school, there is no shame or social ostracism when girls become pregnant. Other girls in school want to pat their stomachs. Their friends throw baby showers at which meager little gifts are given. After delivery, the girls return to school with baby pictures on their cell phones or slipped into their binders, which they eagerly share with me. Often they sit together in my classes, sharing insights into parenting, discussing the taste of Pedialite or the exhaustion that goes with the job. On my way home at night, I often see my students in the projects that surround our school, pushing their strollers or hanging out on their stoops instead of doing their homework.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

Connecticut is among the most generous of the states to out-of-wedlock mothers. Teenage girls like Nicole qualify for a vast array of welfare benefits from the state and federal governments: medical coverage when they become pregnant (called “Healthy Start”); later, medical insurance for the family (“Husky”); child care (“Care 4 Kids”); Section 8 housing subsidies; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; cash assistance.

(*SIGH*)

If you need to get to an appointment, state-sponsored dial-a-ride is available. If that appointment is college-related, no sweat: education grants for single mothers are available, too. Nicole didn’t have to worry about finishing the school year; the state sent a $35-an-hour tutor directly to her home halfway into her final trimester and for six weeks after the baby arrived.

* I CAN'T GO ON. READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE FOR YOURSELVES - IF YOU GIVE A DAMN, THAT IS.

January 31, 2011 at 4:57 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704013604576104351050317610.html

* SUBTITLE THIS ONE: "WHAT BILL SAYS... ONLY IT'S A GUY WHO WRITES FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL."

(*RUEFUL GRIN*)

A surprising number of people on Wall Street will tell you not to worry too much about inflation. After all, they'll say, just look at the numbers. In the past 12 months the Consumer Price Index has risen just 1.5% - a remarkably low rate.

(*LAUGHING AND CRYING AT THE SAME TIME*)

Over the past 30 years, the federal government has made a lot of changes to the way it calculates inflation. It's taken place under presidents of both parties. Each change in methodology has come with plausible-sounding justifications. But, as if by magic, each change has had the effect of flattering the numbers. Funny, that.

(*SNORT*)

According to one rogue economist, John Williams at Shadow Government Statistics, if we still calculated inflation the way we did when Jimmy Carter was president, the official inflation figures would look about as bad as they did when... Jimmy Carter was president. (According to Mr. Williams's calculations, if we counted inflation under the old system the official rate wouldn't be 1.5%. It would be closer to 10%.)

* I MYSELF WOULDN'T GO THAT FAR... BUT THEN AGAIN WHERE I CAN SAVE MONEY (BANG FOR THE BUCK WISE) I DO. MOST FOLKS DON'T. SO MAYBE FOR MOST FOLKS INFLATION REALLY IS THAT HIGH... (*SHRUG*) ONE THING I KNOW; IT'S NOWHERE NEAR THAT PHONEY 1.5% GOVERNMENT FIGURE. (*NOD*)

Under the official calculations, if steak prices boom, the government just assumes you buy cheaper hamburger instead. Presto - no inflation!

(*SMILE*) (*POLITE CHUCKLE*)

Or consider the case of Apple computers. We all know Macs are expensive. And we know Apple doesn't discount. The cheapest Mac laptop today costs $999. A few years ago, it also cost $999. So the price is the same, right? Ha! Not according Uncle Sam.

Using a piece of chicanery called "hedonics," Uncle Sam calls this a price cut. His reasoning? You're getting more for the money. Today's $999 Mac is lighter, fancier and faster than last year's $999 Mac. So the government calculates that the "real" price has actually fallen.

The second reason to treat the official inflation figures with some mistrust is that they look backward. They register what just happened, not what's about to happen next.

OK, so the prices of many things haven't risen. Yet. But if the laws of economics mean anything, they will have to. Why? Because costs are rising.

Economists need to stop focusing just on labor costs. The world has plenty of surplus labor. But look at raw materials. Around the world prices are skyrocketing, from copper to cocoa. The United Nations Food Price Index has just hit a new record high. Oil's back [over $100] a barrel. Wheat prices have nearly doubled since last summer.

(*SIGH*)

Soaring food prices helped spark the revolution in Tunisia. According to Alex Bos, commodities analyst at Macquarie Securities in London, other governments - especially in North Africa - have responded with panic buying of foodstuffs. Algeria alone, he says, has bought about 1.5 million tons of wheat this month - maybe triple its usual amount. Saudi Arabia is rushing to build up grain supplies. Corn supplies are as tight as they were back in the inflationary 1970s. Sooner or later this is going to show up in your supermarket, [and] at the mall, in higher prices.

* ONE WOULD THINK... (*SHRUG*)

The third reason to be mistrustful of the inflation picture? Simple. Economics.

We are flooding the world with extra dollars. The Fed simply invents as many as it likes. In the past couple of years, to try to keep the economy out of a tailspin, it has more than doubled the size of the so-called monetary base.

* THE TECHNICAL TERM IS MONETIZING... MONETIZING A FIAT CURRENCY... (*SIGH*)... WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG...?!?!

January 31, 2011 at 5:22 PM
Anonymous said...

Excellent musical choice today. One of my favorites as well, which just happens to be on The Rat Pack Christmas album, which just happens to be one of my favorite Christmas albums as well (nod to Felton). Nothing says Christmas more to me than a glass of Scotch, a roaring file and Frank, Dean and Sammy merrily singing away.

-Carl

January 31, 2011 at 5:33 PM

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